Maybe Fujitsu's design team felt nostalgic for their now-dead printer division, because there's no way around it--the S1500M looks like a printer (or at least a scanner with an identity crisis). That's not a bad thing, mind you.

Lower-res scans are fast. Device is compact. Scans multiple documents. Includes OCR software

Relatively high price. Doesn't work for thicker pages or bound items. High-quality scans are very slow

ScanSnap's best feature is also its main flaw: The feeder technique yields unprecedented speed at the cost of making it difficult to scan nonstandard page sizes. At the end of the day, though, it really has one job-to scan-and the ScanSnap does this ...

The Cost of Doing Business Cards

Scans business cards and saves contact info as editable text quickly and (mostly) reliably. Syncs with Address Book. Quiet, solid scanner

Expensive. Scans only one card at a time. Intel-only software

The CardScan Executive takes some of the drudgery out of getting the information on business cards into your Mac, but not quite enough to recommend to most users.

If James Bond had a scanner… The DocuPen RC800 is a color scanner that weighs less than 2 ounces and measures 8.9 inches long by 0.5 inch wide. The pen-shaped device can make one-pass copies of contracts, signatures, articles, or any other document ...

Ease of use. Portability. Adjustable scan modes

Limited onboard memory. Bundled software is PC-only

DocuPen is a user-friendly, portable scanner with cool creative applications in addition to its ability to quickly digitize documents.

Make The Paperless Office A Reality

Fast fast, fast. Good image quality for text and business graphics. Easy to use. Can scan varying paper sizes in a batch.

Mediocre photo reproduction quality. Pricey.

. Attack that mountain of documents with the S510M. It'll put you one step closer to the paperless office

I'll take the pen is mightier for $500, Trebek.

Good with bar codes. Helpful speech aide. Universal binary.

Questionable accuracy with single-spaced text. Quirky software. Practice, practice, practice.

. Even with the time spent making corrections, hunt-and-peck typists will save time using the IRISPen Executive 6 as an OCR scanner, and the bar-code functions work well. Experienced typists are better off reading and retyping text.

Affordable Scanners that Turn Film Negatives into Digital Images

Built-in filmstrip feeder. Good image quality ; Limited film holder capacity. No user's guide in box

Limited film holder capacity. No user's guide in box

. The Perfection V100 Photo and Perfection V350 Photo offer two affordable ways to tackle the film conundrum.

De-Scratch Black-and-White Photos

Fluid-mount system for film works well. Great image quality ; Fluid-mount system requires practice and works on black-and-white film only. Fluid and transparent film not included

Fluid-mount system requires practice and works on black-and-white film only. Fluid and transparent film not included

. Though it can't replace a drum scanner, the V750-M Pro is a more affordable alternative, especially for black-and-white negatives.

First-Rate Flatbed Photo Scanner

Small footprint. Great image quality. Solid software bundle ; No hardcopy manual

No hardcopy manual

. The Epson Perfection 4490 Photo is a quality scanner that has the flexibility a photographer needs.

Fast Document Scanner

Fast. Compact. Easy to use ; Pricey. Limited software controls

Pricey. Limited software controls

. ScanSnap can quickly make molehills out of mountains of paper documents.